On primary election night 2024, the 1500 block of East Capitol Street NE was home to one of the more bizarre scenes in recent D.C. political history, as two of the top contenders in the premiere race of the 2024 cycle held victory parties next door to each other. On one end of the street, Wendell Felder’s supporters gathered on the patio at Capitol Square Bar and Grill, sipping drinks and shouting over the din of music. A much smaller crowd of Ebony Payne’s friends and relatives huddled in a small storefront just one building away.

It might be tempting to write off this strange scene as mere happenstance—Ward 7 isn’t home to the larger bars that tend to host such election eve parties—but one man connects both venues: Emmanuel Irono. He runs the Capitol Square bar with several partners (including Clayton Rosenberg, the former advisory neighborhood commissioner who pleaded guilty to defrauding pandemic relief programs) while Irono’s flagship company, Motir Services, Inc., operates out of the squat office building down the block.

That Irono could play host to two very different parties in two very different settings speaks to the depth and breadth of his influence at the intersection of business and politics in D.C.

Over the past 30 years, Irono built Motir into one of the city’s most successful contractors, partnering with the city government on everything from development deals to sanitation contracts, and befriending all manner of local politicos along the way. His pivot into the world of bars and restaurants has only deepened those connections, as Capitol Square has provided a place for the political set to gather in a rapidly developing section of Ward 7 since opening in 2022. According to neighbors, the bar has hosted events for politicians such as At-Large State Board of Education Rep. Jacque Patterson, Shadow Rep. Oye Owolewa, Ward 7 SBOE candidate Toni Criner, and others since its inception. Mayor Muriel Bowser and several councilmembers even paid a visit for Felder’s big day. Irono also has ambitions to build a small restaurant empire, as he’s since outlined plans for at least four other similar businesses around the city.

But as Irono has built his various businesses, he has attracted a slew of lawsuits and government investigations. In a rare move, he was ultimately barred from contracting with the D.C. government in 2021 over allegations that he tried to bribe a procurement official, then lied on forms submitted to investigators probing his conduct.

This has not, however, hindered Irono’s expansion into the hospitality industry, where he’s continued to win the city’s blessing to operate these businesses. Bowser’s administration even announced it was handing him an $836,000 grant in 2023 to open a Capitol Square location at Skyland Town Center, a major District-backed development in Ward 7.

If anything, Irono has doubled down on this new line of business, as government contracting was (by his own admission) the vast majority of his income. Yet the process has been anything but smooth. Contractors complain he’s stiffed them on bills, and neighbors are rebelling against his various plans for these new restaurants. Irono has an almost Trumpian knack for making big promises, then pissing off everyone pulled into his projects. And, much like the president, he is perpetually in court, either using the legal system to challenge adverse government actions or facing lawsuits by his creditors; his Skyland expansion, for instance, has already gone belly-up after his landlord sued him for failing to deliver a restaurant and then repossessed the space.

“This guy has been a bad player no matter where he is,” says Charlotte Lewis, president of the Queens Chapel Civic Association, which has led the opposition to one of his restaurant ventures. “His reputation precedes him, yet he’s still cropping up.”

Irono is broadly emblematic of a particular kind of businessperson who has long thrived in local D.C.: persistently controversial, but resourced (and connected) enough to constantly reinvent themselves and stay at the center of the action. 

Irono can’t do business with the city government again until 2026, unless one of his various legal challenges to the District’s ruling succeeds—but by then, his pivot into the food and beverage world might be complete. The city’s Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Board signed off on his plans to open a “Wegmans-esque” market in North Michigan Park in January, despite efforts by neighbors to block the project. He’s told residents there he hopes it will become the first of many such stores around the city.

Irono was unavailable for an interview for this story, saying he was out of the country for a relative’s funeral; he answered questions via email instead. He attributes many of his legal fights with the District government to “bad apples” who “use their government power to harm innocent people while they enjoy inflicting pain.”

“I am a social impact community investor, basically training and creating jobs in underserved communit[ies],” Irono adds. “I am passionate with creating access and opportunities to lift people out of poverty.”

Barry-backed beginnings

Emmanuel Osita Irono was born in Nigeria in the wake of a bloody civil war. His journey to D.C. started when American missionaries brought him to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where he worked at their church, according to a 2021 administrative hearing.

After paying his way through a local college while working as a school janitor, he earned his MBA at Morgan State University in Baltimore. (He’s been insisting that people refer to him as “Dr. Irono” ever since.) By 1991, he’d made it to D.C. and paid $10,000 to acquire a small janitorial services company, which he renamed Motir. The name is an acronym honoring his parents: Memory of Theresa Irono Romanus.

His relationship with the city government began soon afterward. In particular, Motir benefited from Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry’s efforts to hand government contracts to local, minority-owned businesses, now known as the Certified Business Enterprise program. Irono told the Washington Post back in 2005 that he won a $100,000 contract for janitorial services at the D.C. Armory under Barry, kick-starting Motir’s growth.

“I was the last small business that was able to survive [in the 1990s] because sometimes the city owes us money for a year or two years before they pay us, but I was able to do my work and survive,” Irono said during the 2021 hearing. “The benchmark of my success is integrity, trust and charity.”

The company grew steadily from there, as Motir eventually won work cleaning D.C. schools and libraries, the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, St. Elizabeths Hospital, and a variety of federal buildings, too, such as the Pentagon and Fort Belvoir. He gradually expanded into the world of development under then-Mayor Tony Williams, winning a piece of the lucrative Anacostia Gateway project, which would eventually become home to several city agencies.

All the while, Motir faced questions about whether it was really meeting the spirit of D.C. contracting rules. The company claimed a presence in the District, which is necessary to maintain its status as a CBE and keep its special advantages in winning D.C. contracts, but it appeared to conduct most of its work out of a warehouse in Capitol Heights, Maryland, and Irono’s employees said as much to the FBI. (A city commission investigated claims about Motir abusing the system more than a decade ago, but dismissed them.)

It’s difficult to pin down how successful, exactly, Irono has become, but it’s clear that his partnership with the government has been lucrative. He’s repeatedly called Motir a “$30 million profit generator” in media interviews. And in legal filings in 2020, he said the company netted between $1.1 million and $2 million in revenue per month that year as Motir took on more COVID-related cleaning services for the city and federal governments; in all, he claimed the firm held 22 contracts with District agencies representing “approximately 95 percent” of all its business. 

His attorneys said Motir had 270 employees as of that time, and Irono has involved many of his workers in his growing charitable efforts, which have earned him many plaudits in the local press. He runs the TIS Foundation to help children both locally and in West Africa with his wife, Ogechukwu. Tax documents show the nonprofit pulls in about $1.5 million in revenue each year. Neighbors say Irono regularly holds food giveaways in the Hill East community, making a particular effort to hand out turkeys around Thanksgiving.

Irono has also given nearly $11,000 across a variety of local races since 2006, including to Adrian Fenty, Linda Cropp, and Vince Gray. Irono chipped in $1,000 for Bowser’s 2014 mayoral bid and another $2,000 for her 2018 reelection. He also gave a combined $1,500 to At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie that same year. His legal odyssey started right around this time.

FBI scrutiny

Although Irono’s bread and butter may be doing business with the D.C. government, his legal troubles started with the White House.

The General Services Administration moved to bar Motir from working with the federal government in 2019. An FBI investigation into one of Irono’s former employees, Anthony Ray, kicked off a broader probe of Motir and its business practices. Agents found evidence that Motir broke contracting rules and lied about its past experience to win big contracts, according to GSA records. (These claims closely mirror the allegations about Irono’s gaming of the District’s CBE program.)

At the dawn of the Obama administration in 2009, Ray won a contract to provide moving services to the White House for his small firm, Dimensional Solutions, Inc. Motir had won the previous five-year deal for this work, but the company was graduating from the federal minority business preference training program that allowed it to qualify for the contract. Ray enrolled in that program, listing his past with Motir to bolster his bid, and he was successful, according to GSA records.

But Ray was acting in concert with Irono the whole time, and DSI was essentially just a front for Motir, the GSA claimed in its Sept. 30, 2019, notice barring Irono’s company from federal contracting work. FBI agents interviewed several current and former Motir employees who said they set up DSI at Irono’s direction “in order to get the White House contract after Motir’s contract ended,” according to the GSA notice of debarment. Ray even told investigators that “DSI had no staff and no experience in the area of government contracting and that Motir employees prepared DSI’s bid for the contract,” according to the notice. 

Irono had access to some of Ray’s accounts and even paid his wife using DSI funds, Ray told investigators, according to GSA records. (Ray claimed Irono did this without his knowledge and the pair cut ties soon afterward.) FBI agents also found evidence that Motir and DSI employees sent emails using the same IP address after searching Motir’s East Capitol Street office, GSA records show.

Current Motir employees told the FBI that the company was principally located in Maryland and it only kept the D.C. office so it could keep its status as a CBE contractor. Irono’s executive assistant, Elizabeth Rapp, said that Irono told her directly to “misrepresent Motir’s office location in any communication via telephone or email if anyone asked about Motir’s offices,” according to GSA records. She also claimed she was directed to submit false information in bid documents trumpeting Motir’s past performance; when she raised concerns to Irono, he told her “not to worry about it,” according to the debarment notice.

GSA cut ties with Irono as a result of these issues, but Irono waged a vigorous legal campaign to reverse his debarment, including a case challenging the ruling in federal court. His attorneys claimed that Ray formed DSI unbeknownst to Irono and that Irono only sought to help the company perform the work at Ray’s requests. Rapp even filed an affidavit on Motir’s behalf, denying that the statements the FBI ascribed to her were accurate. 

Ultimately, Irono secured a meeting with GSA officials in late September 2019. After pleading his case and promising to make governance changes, the agency reversed its decision on Oct. 4, 2019.

This would not, however, be the end of Motir’s legal woes.

An allegation of a canvas bag full of cash

On April 29, 2020, a top contracting officer for the District headed into the parking lot of his office at 64 New York Ave. NE to meet Irono.

The Motir executive had spent several days pressing Wilbur Giles, who oversees contracting decisions for D.C.’s Department of Health and Human Services, for a meeting to discuss a “business opportunity,” Giles said in an affidavit. The company was at this time attempting to weather the pandemic by finding new, COVID-inspired cleaning contracts at city facilities to offset the disruption of traditional office work.

With most other businesses still shuttered, the pair agreed to meet in the parking lot of Giles’ offices. When Irono arrived, Giles claims in an affidavit that Irono showed him two magazines featuring his charitable work, placed them in a blue canvas bag, and tried to hand them over to him. Inside, Giles found a large number of “dollar bills of large currency,” the affidavit says.

“I told Emmanuel that his actions were inappropriate and illegal and that he had the wrong person to attempt this action,” Giles wrote in a May 12, 2020, affidavit to the city’s Office of the Inspector General. “As I walked away from him he said that he meant no disrespect and that he was only trying to show his appreciation. I returned to my office and immediately reported the entire incident to my supervisor.”

The incident does not appear to have resulted in any criminal charges against Irono. But a few months later, the city’s Office of Contracting and Procurement told him that he could be barred from doing business with the city, citing Giles’ statement to the OIG.

Irono again sought to fight the allegations in court, filing suit against the District in D.C. Superior Court in September 2020. In court documents, his attorneys called Giles a “biased and vengeful government employee” seeking revenge against Motir.

Irono claimed in court filings that he’d employed Giles as a consultant in 2013, but fired him for providing false invoices to the company. He alleged he’d forgotten about this fact until March 2020 when he learned Giles was overseeing health contracts, so he “called Mr. Giles in hopes of patching up any hard feelings he might still have” and to “let him see the high level of good work we were doing on the job for the D.C. government agencies, as well as in the community.” Irono denied trying to bribe Giles and claimed there was no money inside the bag, according to court records. 

A judge tossed out Irono’s lawsuit on procedural grounds, but Motir never ended up facing any punishment. OCP dropped the case against him because it found “there was no cause for debarment with respect to the allegations of bribery,” according to an agency spokesperson. At the end of the day, it was Giles’ word against Irono’s. (Giles, who no longer appears to work for the D.C. government, could not be reached for comment.) 

“Even though we prevailed, the false allegation still did terrible damage to my business and my reputation,” Irono says via email.

Yet the procurement office did not stop pursuing a case against Motir and Irono: It simply changed its focus.

Lies and fabrications?

The GSA’s debarment of Irono lasted only a few weeks, but its consequences have lingered for years.

On Feb. 25, 2021, OCP once again notified Irono that he’d soon be barred from D.C. contracting. This time, the agency was alleging that he’d lied about his past on forms submitted to contracting officials.

Specifically, when one of Motir’s contracts came up for renewal in October 2019, the city asked routine questions about whether the company had ever been investigated for procurement law violations or if it had ever been suspended or debarred by any government agency. Irono signed forms saying Motir hadn’t, even though the GSA had tried to debar the company just weeks before, according to the debarment notice. 

As OCP investigated the bribery allegations, it stumbled across these forms and demanded answers from Irono. His attorneys sent along an email from Rapp, the administrative assistant at the heart of the GSA matter, purporting to show that she submitted amended forms to the city reversing that answer and detailing the federal investigation of Motir. But OCP couldn’t find any evidence that the email actually existed when it searched its IT records, leading local officials to conclude that Irono had somehow falsified it, the debarment notice says.

Irono countered by blaming basically all of this on Rapp. His attorneys, Carol Elder Bruce and Tillman Finley, wrote in an April 1, 2021, letter to OCP that Irono was “stunned and disheartened” to discover that “one of his closest assistants” submitted erroneous forms based on outdated templates. Irono even hired an IT firm to confirm the government’s suspicions that Rapp never sent an updated form, disclaiming any knowledge of these “apparently willful, deliberate, and wrongful acts.”

“We believe that to cover her own mistake [in 2020], she fabricated documents,” Bruce said at an April 26, 2021, hearing on the subject, according to a transcript. “I know Dr. Irono is struck by it, like, why didn’t she just tell the truth? I know, but she is a very sort of perfectionist person, wants to do things right, and probably felt awful about the fact that she hadn’t.”

Bruce noted, however, that Rapp denied doing anything wrong. Irono said during the same hearing that he placed her on administrative leave from both her roles at Motir and his charity organization, the TIS Foundation.

“I just want you guys to know who I am personally, that I’m not the person that they make me to be,” Irono said. “I would never do anything like this.”

George Schutter, then the city’s chief procurement officer, was unpersuaded by those denials. On May 21, 2021, he issued a final order barring Irono from doing business with the city through February 2026. Schutter argued in the order that Irono never produced conclusive evidence that Rapp was responsible for these errors and admonished Motir for failing to strengthen its governance after the GSA raised concerns. (OCP subsequently discovered that Rapp was still working for the company despite Irono’s claims she’d been put on leave, according to court records.)

“Looking at all the circumstances of this case, I must conclude that Motir’s problems do not rest with a single errant individual employed by Motir but are rather systemic in nature,” Schutter wrote. 

Irono appealed to the city’s Contract Appeals Board for a reversal of this decision. (In the July 2021 filing, his attorneys claimed the “odious stench of potential bias” hung over the case, owing to Giles’ continued employment at OCP.) Four years later, those proceedings are still ongoing.

Irono and the city agreed to a partial settlement of the case last year, in which Motir consented to hire a corporate monitor to police its ethics moving forward, but the two sides are still haggling over some details. Both Irono and the OCP spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation, as did the Office of the Attorney General (which is representing the city on the case).

Irono and Motir have remained on the city’s “excluded parties list,” a public blacklist of sorts that means they can’t win any new contracts from the District through February 2026. Their existing deals were terminated, and the Department of Small and Local Business Development has suspended his company’s CBE status, stating in a notice that Irono repeatedly tried to renew his CBE paperwork without disclosing his debarment. 

Capitol Square connections

As Irono was busy battling the city in court over one of his businesses, Joe Spinelli and Mo Soliman were trying to talk him out of opening another one.

Irono had hired the pair to help him open a new restaurant on the edge of the newly trendy Hill East neighborhood. Irono had big ideas for what would become the Capitol Square Bar and Grill, yet they were losing confidence that he could actually realize them.

“From the beginning, he didn’t know anything about the restaurant world,” says Spinelli, who runs a popular Maryland-based consulting firm for aspiring restaurateurs. “Or more so it was that he didn’t know what he didn’t know.”

Soliman, a local chef who Spinelli recruited to manage the restaurant’s operations, remembers warning Irono that restaurants are a “different beast” from the world where he built his fortune. But Irono was insistent.

He began trying to convince neighbors of the wisdom of his plans. Irono pitched the establishment as a place for “healthy comfort food,” but his interest in adding a large outdoor patio with permission to host DJs and other musicians drew scrutiny from the area’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

So Irono leaned on his political connections to try and smooth the way. He hired Chander Jayaraman (who once represented the area as an ANC) as a consultant to navigate the licensing and permitting process. And then he turned to a much more notable name for help: Michael A. Brown, the former councilmember convicted of taking bribes who has since pivoted into a new career as a lobbyist. 

It’s not clear what Brown’s role was in boosting the project, but it’s apparent he was trying to leverage his connections to help push it over the finish line. An advisory neighborhood commissioner in the area who requested anonymity shared a voicemail with City Paper in which Brown offered to arrange a meeting with Irono to “chat a little bit about our vision for the cafe.” Brown also mentioned having met with Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, then the area’s representative before it was redistricted into Ward 7, about the project. (Brown, who held a campaign event at Capitol Square during his unsuccessful bid for D.C. delegate last year, declined to comment for this story.)

Jayaraman says he was optimistic about the project at first. The building had sat vacant for a while and the area needed new restaurants. But he, too, grew frustrated with Irono’s management style. His vision for Capitol Square “just kept changing and growing and growing,” Jayaraman recalls, with Irono’s initial pitch for a humble neighborhood restaurant morphing into a high-end eatery with trendy DJs meant to attract local celebrities and notables. Similarly, Soliman remembers Irono repeatedly reassuring him that the restaurant could justify higher prices because “all my friends from Congress and the Senate will be coming in.”

“It was clear to me that it was all about him and his ego and wanting to show that he had this vision for this place, which was all glitz and glamour,” Jayaraman says.

Disgruntled employee

Despite these disputes and some initial friction with the ANC, Irono eventually opened Capitol Square in 2022. It attracted some noise complaints from neighbors, but its management struck a compromise by keeping musical acts inside. Still, Soliman says “it was a struggle from day one” drumming up any business for the restaurant, given its uneven branding and location off the beaten path.

But there were hints of deeper problems. Soliman says he quickly started hearing from construction subcontractors complaining about unpaid bills. Some listed debts in the five figures. That included Jayaraman, who says he never received the $4,000 he was owed for his services, and Spinelli, who estimates he was owed even more. Spinelli sued Irono over the debts and was able to recoup some of the missed payments as a result, but he believes he was still a few thousand dollars short of what he was owed. (Irono says he paid both men in full, calling Soliman, in particular, “a disgruntled employee.”)

“It happens all the time that people go into this business and they’re undercapitalized, and that’s how they manage to get through it,” Spinelli says. “They don’t pay all their bills, or they don’t pay someone on time. Then they try to stretch that out as much as they can.”

A few months after the restaurant opened, Irono brought on Rosenberg, the former Ward 8 ANC who pleaded guilty to federal charges last year, to help run Capitol Square. Soliman says he was never particularly clear what Rosenberg’s role was at the restaurant—he was identified as its “managing partner and general manager” in a January 2023 Washington Informer article, while a DCist story in October 2023 described him as “co-owner” and detailed his efforts to recruit prominent local chef James Robinson to helm the kitchen. (Irono tells City Paper via email that he hired Rosenberg as a “front-end manager and community liaison” and denies that played any ownership role in the restaurant. He adds that he “learned after his conviction that he misrepresented his relationship with my restaurant.”)

Last summer, Rosenberg admitted to participating in a scheme to submit fraudulent applications for businesses seeking pandemic relief funds, then pocketing a cut of the loans they received. Federal prosecutors said Rosenberg pocketed more than $1.66 million as part of the conspiracy, and they found evidence that he used aliases, created false Social Security cards and driver’s licenses, and lied about his academic credentials. He reported to federal prison in November to begin serving a five-year sentence, and did not respond to a request for comment.

“After the news about Clayton came out, I asked [Irono], ‘Whatever happened to that guy, Clayton, your partner?’” Jayaraman says. “He told me, ‘Oh, I think he went back to grad school.’ I just left it at that, like, ‘Uh-huh, I bet he did.’”

Neighbors and ex-employees have watched the restaurant with a skeptical eye these past few years, baffled that it has managed to remain open despite the struggle to consistently attract customers. The bar’s social media posts suggest, at least, that it has become a hub for football watch parties, boozy brunches, and plenty of DJs. (The rapper Wale even appears to have stopped by in 2023.) “I don’t see anybody in there,” says Jayaraman, who lives nearby. “And I don’t know how you stay open with just a handful of customers a day.”

Soliman says he did his best to set the restaurant up for success, but he grew frustrated with Irono’s constant shifts in strategy and general unfamiliarity with the industry. He quit in disgust in late 2022, even though he estimates Irono still owes him something like $15,000. He considered suing Irono, as Spinelli did, but he mostly just “wanted to be far away from him.”

“It was completely horrible,” Soliman says. “I should have never taken on the job in the first place.”

‘He says one thing and he just does something else’

When signs first went up last summer advertising a new liquor store at 1901 Michigan Ave. NE, neighbors got nervous. 

The space was once home to a 7-Eleven before it briefly operated as an international market. But that business went under relatively quickly, and Irono stepped in to assume the lease in the small North Michigan Park shopping center. 

Lewis, the head of the nearby Queens Chapel Civic Association, says she and others in the neighborhood immediately began asking questions about the project, due to its proximity to several churches and day care centers. They soon encountered Irono, who tried to sell them on his vision of a new store he was dubbing “Sahara Market.”

“He started out saying that he wants it to be a replica of his location on East Capitol Street, which is a bar and restaurant with an outside cafe, a lot of noise, a lot of activity on the weekend,” Lewis says. “But we’re not East Capitol Street.”

Sensing that pushback, Irono’s explanations began to shift, Lewis says. At first, he pledged the shop would be a combination of a restaurant and a liquor store. Then, he became more focused on beer and wine, specifically, starting to pitch it as a “mini-Wegmans” where customers could buy high-end booze but also get a nice bite to eat. 

That didn’t sound so bad, in theory, but Lewis and her colleagues in the civic association were growing suspicious that Irono’s story kept changing. They feared that he’d secure the necessary permits to open the market, then completely change the vision for the project.

“He’s not leveling with the community at all,” Lewis says. “He says one thing and he just does something else.”

Soon Lewis and her neighbors discovered Irono’s lengthy legal history with the government, which only heightened their concerns. They brought their issues to the area’s ANC, Edward Borrego, who tried to mediate a solution. 

“It is normal and expected that with any community development or improvement residents raise some concerns,” Irono says. “All we want to do is support the community with healthy fresh food options.”

It took several heated community meetings, and lots of back-and-forth with Irono, but the ANC eventually struck a settlement agreement in August outlining conditions governing the new establishment’s operations. The civic association still wasn’t satisfied, and Borrego admits to having some reservations of his own, based on Irono’s shifting statements about his intentions. But the agreement bars Irono from pursuing live entertainment or a dance floor at the space, which are two of the neighborhood’s biggest concerns about the potential future Sahara Market. 

“From my perspective, what I could do that was in the best interest of the neighborhood was try to negotiate the tightest settlement agreement I could, with terms that bind the owner as close as I can to the proposal that he has presented to the neighborhood,” Borrego says. “Which is, literally, in his words, ‘like a mini Wegmans.’”

Lewis and the civic association opted to spend the next few months protesting Irono’s application for liquor licenses anyway. But the ABC Board eventually approved them in January, setting the stage for Sahara Market to become a reality. Irono says he hopes to open sometime this fall.

The board acknowledged in its order that Irono is barred from doing business with the D.C. government, but Lewis remains frustrated that the government could reprimand Irono as a bad actor via one of its agencies, while awarding him a highly sought-after business license with another. 

“It just irks me,” Lewis says. “We work hard to maintain our community, and then we have the city agencies just turn a blind eye and give out these licenses or these applications. … They have a right to do business, but we have a right to protect our communities.”

Emmanuel’s expanding empire

The question now is: How might Irono’s hospitality ambitions expand? If things hadn’t fallen apart between the pair, Soliman says Irono had hoped to have him open several other establishments around the city.

Last fall, East Capitol Street neighbors were a bit surprised to find signs advertising a new “Sahara Market” posted at the former home of a quirky corner store just next door to Capitol Square. The shop has yet to progress beyond the “coming soon” posters. He has promised to open more Capitol Square locations too.

But the future of those restaurants is a bit unclear. 

The location planned for Ward 7’s Skyland Town Center probably got the most attention, considering that Bowser awarded Irono an $836,000 grant to open it in December 2023 through her “Food Access Fund,” trumpeting the decision as part of a celebration of DMV Black Restaurant Week. But that project appears to have gone belly-up—Irono’s landlords at Skyland sued him on July 31 for failing to open the restaurant as his lease required.

In December, a D.C. Superior Court judge resolved the case and handed control of the space back to the landlord (and awarded it nearly $3,000 in attorneys’ fees for its trouble). A spokesperson for the city’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development, who manages the grant program, says Irono never received the grant money from the city. Capitol Square was “conditionally approved for funding, but during the compliance review period, their award was rescinded,” the spokesperson says.

Irono has also filed papers to create a limited liability company dubbed “DC Capitol Square Bar & Grill at H Street,” listing 1402 H Street NE as its address. It appears this is retail space in a newer apartment building on the street, but no restaurant has materialized there as of yet. Spinelli says Irono asked for his help opening up a place there, he found it “just too risky” to get involved with him again. 

For his part, Irono says he fully plans to open both locations but “timelines are not confirmed yet.”

It’s an open question, though, whether Irono has the cash to get these businesses off the ground. D.C. records show his bank foreclosed on his office building at 1508 East Capitol St., which houses Motir’s HQ, in May, though he appears to have maintained control of the property by paying some of his mortgage debts.

He also owes more than $91,000 in property taxes on Motir’s HQ, per city records, and the property was sold in a tax sale in July. That process gives Irono time after the sale to make his payments, or else he risks officially losing the building. The city also filed a lien against his property in January for failing to make roughly $6,600 in water bill payments (a filing in March indicates there he still owes more than $1,000). Washington Gas, meanwhile, sued Motir in August 2023 for failing to pay nearly $18,000 in bills.

If nothing else, Irono has proven over the years that he is resilient. It seems like a bad bet to assume he won’t turn up somewhere else around D.C. with a new plan.

“I don’t know what he’s up to,” Jayaraman says. “I just don’t understand what he’s doing and how he’s doing it.”